No
JS, you are reading it the opposite way around. Clearly
didn't. And the since the ATC is confused why no emergency declared at that point - he feels like there should be one - that leads to the fuzzy statement
assume he'd come back. Why? Because either the poor ATCO or his colleague before completely missed the 3x MAYDAY call.
Every single thing the BA said made perfect sense (to a pilot) and they went out of their way to be the smallest possible pain they could. BTW your profile is a bit economical with details, are you a pilot?
I'm sure the ATC did an illustrious job in their field - i.e. keeping the traffic separated (!!!) - but on a communication side, they're half clueless of what the BA guys job was. [Or did they expect them to fly on three back to the UK ?
Fair enough]
This one is a must in class to show how the fluent English speaking pilots got it wrong (when scared to death, literally):
For a light amusement during the break, that BAW/PHX recording is perfect.
Another show point at 09:03:
"Can you let me know what your fuel left is?"
"Er, we've got - there's about 54 tonnes of fuel. So we've just come down to max landing weight. And if possible, we'd like to stop the rollout towards the end of the runway, sir?"
"Oh yeah, you said how many? how, You said how many pounds of fuel?
"Sorry, how many what, sor?
"How many pounds, or can you give us that in time? Or is it just easier with - you said 5,400 pounds?
"50 thousand kilos"
"50 thousand kilos, okay".
The boring option:
"BAW report endurance.
"Just a sec, sir. ... About 3 hours, one or two G/As included."
"Copy 38P"